I Love My Job.

Seriously - I love my new job. An avid reader, in a library! Does it get any better. (Well, I have lost a lot of reading time, but apart from that!) Here is what I have bought home from my first week of work.

 These books I actually borrowed. In fact, the top four I took of the shelving trolley as I spent my first four days reshelving. (Yep, four days of nothing but reshelving! I now know the library forwards, backwards and inside out!) Personally I feel I was incredibly restrained!

Then today there was a trolley of young adult fiction that had be discontinued. Not sure why - may simply be multiple copies that are not moving much anymore. I love Maureen McCarthy so couldn't go part this pile of them. The top Meme McDonald looked interesting too. Again, I could have taken a lot more!

Finally there was a bunch of quilting magazines that were being taken out of circulation as well.

Now all I need to do is find some reading time!

Cellist of Sarajevo

The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway

I put this book on hold at the library after I read a review on Gerbera Daisy Diaries. You can read her review here.

On May 27, 1992, a mortar struck a line of people waiting to buy bread in Sarjevo, a city under siege. 22 people were killed. For the next 22 days, Vedran Smailović, a renowned Sarajevan cellist, played Albinoni’s Adagio in G Minor.

Galloway uses this event to explore the lives of three fictional characters living in a city they once moved about freely, but are now confronted with the very real possibility of death every time they step outside their doors.

I remember the siege of Sarajevo. I can remember wondering why no one did anything, why the world sat by and let it happen. I cannot imagine being scared to walk around a city I have known all my life. Dashing across roads in the hope that there wasn't a sniper focused on it, and if there was, that I wasn't the one today. 

The Cellist of Sarajevo moved me in an intense way. My heart broke for those people who lived through this and those who didn't. Those who died for the whim of someone on a hill with a gun.

Life is a bit hectic at the moment!

I got a job. A pretty good job actually. After two years of struggling with the Education Department in Queensland, I, on a whim, applied for a job as a library assistant at the library - and got it. Applied Thursday, interview Friday, started Tuesday (Monday was a public holiday.).  After not working for 2.5 years and not working full time for over 8, it has a been a bit of a shock. It's only full time until the end of August and then hopefully 4 days until the end of September. After that, who knows, hopefully they will extend me again.
In the meantime, bear with me as I adjust to this new schedule! (My google reader currently has 441 unread items!) I have however been featured over at The Readings of a Busy Mom! I'm very excited! Go check it out!

Teaser Tuesday

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by MizB over at Should Be Reading

This is how it works

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers.

  This weeks Teaser Tuesday comes from

 

The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway.

What makes the difference, he realises, is whether you want to stay in the world you live in. Because while he always be afraid of death, and nothing can change that, the question is whether your life is worth that fear. Do you face the terror that must come with knowing you're about to die, just for the sake of one last glimpse of life?

I'd love to know your teaser! Leave me a link!

It's Monday! What are you reading?

What are you reading Monday  is hosted by Shelia over at Book Journey. Head over and check out what others are reading!

What I have finished this week

Two books finished (and reviewed!) this week!

The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb - finally managed to finish it this week! Yay!

The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo - I came across this while shelving books at my son's school library and given how much I loved The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, I had to borrow it. I read it in a couple of hours this morning, between loads of washing, while sitting on my deck in the sun. Bliss!


What I am reading now

The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway

From Goodreads:
Sarajevo: a city under siege. As the mortars fall and the snipers conduct their deadly chess manoeuvres, a cellist sits at his window. The piece he pl...more

Sarajevo: a city under siege. As the mortars fall and the snipers conduct their deadly chess manoeuvres, a cellist sits at his window. The piece he plays, Albinoni's Adagio in G Minor, is all that restores his hope, at least for a time. On this day a bomb falls on the street below him, killing twenty-two people waiting in line to buy bread. For the next twenty-two days he will carry his cello into the cratered street at four each afternoon and play the Adagio in memory of the dead. The Cellist of Sarajevo imagines those twenty-two days through the eyes of three of its citizens. Kenan Scaron;imunović, who sets out every few days to fill containers with water for his family, with no idea whether he will return home. Dragan Isović, who longs to be reunited with the wife and son he smuggled out of the city months earlier. Arrow, a crack 'counter-sniper' too nimble and skilful to be killed by the besiegers in the hills, who is assigned the job of keeping the cellist alive. Exquisite and profoundly moving, The Cellist of Sarajevo gives life to the suffering, cruelty, courage and endurance of a broken city. It is a story about survival in a time of war, about honouring the dead while struggling to stay alive, about the temptation to hate and the refusal to do so, about the power of music to shape our humanity.

 I picked this up from the library after reading a review on Gerbera Daisy Diaries. Sounds very intriguing and after the long, at times torturous read of The Hour I First Believed, a quick read is very much in order! 

What's next?
Next on my list will be August's book group read - Mistborn: The Final Empire  by Brandon Sanderson. After that I may finally get the chance to read   We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver. We decided at book group yesterday to reschedule this one for September.

So what are you reading? Leave me a link!

The Tale of Despereaux

The Tale of Desperaux by Kate DiCamillo

Having read and loooooooooooooved The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, when I saw Desperaux as I was reshelving books at my son's school, I had to borrow it.

One of the first things that caught my eye was the "about the author" note at the front of the book.

Of "The Tale of Despereaux," Kate says, "My best friend's son asked me if I would write a story for him. "It's about an unlikely  hero," he said, "one with exceptionally large ears." "What happens to this hero?" I asked. "I don't know," he said. "That's why I want you to write the story, so we can find out."

Seriously, how cool to have a story written about a hero with exceptionally large ears because you want to find out what happens.

Despereaux is a mouse with exceptionally large ears and exceptionally non-mousy behaviour. Having fallen in love with the human princess and broken several mouse rules, he is banished to the dungeon where the rats live. What follows is the tale of how he escapes and how he saves the princess as well.

DiCamillo is a fantastic children's writer. While I think Edward is better than Despereaux, I can see me buying a copy of this and others she had written. Her books have that wonderful magical quality needed to shine in the world of children's fiction. It will be read aloud frequently in this house!

The Hour I First Believed

The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb

The problem I feel when reading a book that you have heard lots about is whether or not it lives up to expectations. There is also the problem of trying to condense a book during the blurb to adequately explain what it is about.

I thought The Hour I First Believed was about a couple's attempt to recover after the tragedy that was Columbine, and while that was an aspect of the book, in the end it was a minor part. Columbine was the catalyst for Caelum and Maureen to move back to Connecticut. It's the root of Maureen's problem, but the heart of the book is about Caelum's discovery about his family history and how that helps him reconcile the person he has become.


Once I dealt with the fact that this is what the book is about, I quite enjoyed it. I did at times find it, not necessarily hard going, but challenging. It most probably wasn't until towards the end that I could see where the story was going and what the point of the whole thing was. I would like to read Wally Lamb's other stuff, but feel I will need to be in the right mood to do so.